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Proof that you can pee in the ocean

By web gangsta | Published:August 2, 2013

Web Watch knows that swimming in the ocean isn’t for everyone. If you think about it, you’re swimming in the same water that billions (billions of trillions?) of fish use as their personal bathroom every day.

Have you ever wondered why the ocean water is unusually warm on some days compared to others? It’s not because the sun warms the water — it’s because there’s more fresh pee in your immediate area than normal.

Okay, that may not really be true — you’re not going to feel any pee warmth unless you’re actually – you know – right next to the offending person or animal who has decided to use your local water spot for their personal relief station.

So while we all know you can pee in the ocean (and that many professional competitive swimmers pee in their pools all the time) — the bigger question is whether YOU SHOULD PEE IN THE OCEAN or not.

Other than the “ick” factor, there is some science surrounding what happens to the ocean around you when you pee.

And in a nutshell: the ocean is so big and vast, that your individual pee amount is diluted almost instantly to be relatively uneventful. Pee contains mostly water, and the other elements that make up urine are actually considered beneficial to various sealife. Granted, lots of bacteria are attracted to urine once it leaves your body, but urine itself is sterile when it’s fresh.

The earth has a sea surface area of roughly 361,132,000km2 or 361,320,000,000,000,000cm2 (361 quadrillion 320 trillion cm2)

So if you spread out that 1,000cm3 of piss over 361,320,000,000,000,000cm2 you get a sea level rise of 2.7676298 × 10^15 or 0.000000000027676298cm or almost 3 x 1 hundred billionths of a meter, this is many times smaller than the width of a single hydrogen atom.